Look what I got for Christmas!

My sister sent me this in progress quilt that our great aunt made. It has many papers with it, one showing when she bought the pattern 1932--It was from Women's world. My aunt taught at Greenbrier (I think a prep school type for girls) she had her bachleor's in home ec. and her masters in Latin! Every thing is hand pieced. The blocks are dirty. I hand washed the plain white squares, and then hung them to dry. I also washed the pink and green fabric. To finish this quilt I have to get white fabric. Should I get a color to try and match the white squares, or do I bleach it to get out the stains? I tried oxygen bleach in the first try.

The pattern is called tobacco leaves--maybe roses and tobacco leaves. I think this refers to the very wide large leaf which when I wrote the name out in cyber space it showed many different patterns that all had this broad leaf.

Here are some of my questions. Should I try and make the quilt a little bigger? It is for a double bed. I figure one mmore 12 inch square wide would be enough to make it a queen sized.
Second, do you think I need to hand piece the rest of the quilt? (because she did)
Do you have any suggestions as to how to clean the fabric? The worst is the applique squares, which is no suprise since that was handled the most.
The fabric that is green is written on the selvage and on it it says percale, and 80 something. I can't go and get it right now, it's late and my daughter is sleeping in my sewing room. So I always learned that percale (sheets) were a 200 thread count or higher. Could this mean 80 thread count? It seems like it is a tight weave-not as tight as bali batiks, but more than muslin.
That should get me started!
Thanks for your help.
Barbara
I don't see the place to add an attachment, may have to post again to get that in.

Keep away from people who belittle your ambitions. Small people always do that, but the really great make you feel that you too can become great. Mark Twain

If you have enough to finish the quilt for a double bed, I would complete that part. I would then add 2 or 3 borders to get the needed 12 more inches for a queen. You will probably never be able to match the original close enough to not be noticable. There are product designed for fixing old fabrics but I think I might wait until the top is completed. I can't remember the name but if you type in old fabric stain in the search something may come up. The subject has been discussed before on QB.

I tried to post a picture of the squares, looks like I am not a wiz on that! It keeps saying the upload failed. The fabric says ABCEIGHTY SQUARE----FASTCOLORPERCALE I have about 2 yards of the green and at least 1 yard of the pink. It is the white that I have none left. It's kind of a hoot to see the printing on the selvage like this, it is red!

The problem I have with adding lots of borders is simply that it is 4 blocks across. It looks unbalanced to me. The way she drew her diagram is every other square is a plain white square. So she has 2 white, and 2 applique.

And I agree about having a masters in LATIN! (She was born about 1892)

Keep away from people who belittle your ambitions. Small people always do that, but the really great make you feel that you too can become great. Mark Twain

It will be a lot easier to comment when you have managed to attach a pic (I'm still trying to work that out myself!!). Keep trying! Meanwhile, by all means buy a new 'white' but go for an off white, to keep the antique look. Is some of it already pieced or do you just have a pile of blocks, some appliqued?

As to your question about hand or machine. For me that would depend on whether you LOVE hand work? If you do go for it. If not the quilt police will not come after you if you finish on the machine, I'm sure Auntie would just be delighted to see it finished either way, were she still with us.

Your upload might have failed because your picture is too big. You will have to resize it and make it smaller so QB will accept it. There is some information about resizing photos here someplace. I will do a search and see if I can get you a link.

Found it. Here is the post by Patrice with information on how to post and resize.